Book Club Project

For this project, we were divided into groups of four read one book that we were allowed to choose from a series of different options. In my book club, we were assigned the book Little Bee by Chris Cleave. Little Bee was definitely one of the most interesting books I have ever read in my life, and I have read a lot of books. It definitely was nothing like what I expected it to be like, as I was led to believe that it would be an extremely hilarious novel. There were parts of the story that made you laugh, but it was because of the writing style the author used, not the actual story. The plot of the story was kind of nonexistent, which is why it is interesting that this story was so interesting. The book revolved around a Nigerian refugee whose village was destroyed by oil companies because they discovered an oil reserve underneath their land, and her struggle to avoid them. The reading was uniquely entertaining because it provided multiple perspectives of the same issue. In addition, it provided very analytical descriptions of many things. This was one of those books that gave you incredible insight into the two main characters, more so than in most other novels, and made it feel like there was an intimate connection between the reader and the narrator. As a reader, I learned that my procrastination issues do not apply to reading assignments. One of my biggest problems as a student, and a problem that I have been trying to fix since 7th grade, is my tendency to wait until last minute to complete assignments. That definitely did not happen when organizing what pages I would read on each night. In fact, on most occasions, I read the entire weeks reading on the first night, allowing me to focus on the artifact and literature letters (honestly I spent most of that time on the literature letter).

As part of this book club, we were asked to create 3 artifacts and three literature letters; one for each week of reading. Each week also had a different prompt for the artifacts and letters. Week one's prompt was about a character, week two was all about the conflict in the story, and week three was about the theme of the story (as by this point we had completed the reading). My first artifact is an "I Am" poem based on the perspective of Little Bee. This artifact forced me to reflect on the inner perspectives of Little Bee on a wide variety of issues, from what she thinks about, to what she hopes for in the future, to what still haunts her from her past. My second artifact, called a Split Open Mind, was based on another character in the story, Lawrence (who is Sarah's lover). This artifact forced me to analyze the different sides of his internal argument, and challenged me to visually represent the conflicts happening within his head regarding Little Bee. I think this was a fantastic artifact from a reflective standpoint because of how it forced to change our perspective multiple times while doing the actual assignment. It forced me to use a very HTH-esque thinking process to be able to accurately represent both sides of an internal conflict. The third and final artifact we had to complete as a group, and we chose to do the Illustrated Plot Poem option. In this poem, we basically had to write a poem as a group that described many aspects of the book, including rising action, conflict, resolution, and many more while using an "aabbcc..." rhyme scheme. The part of the artifact that sticks out to me however is the frame, because of how much symbolism was used in it. Each image has a specific meaning, as you can read more about in my artifact displayed below.

In regards to the feedback I received on my artifacts, I honestly did not learn anything that I will use in the future or that could be of help. I believe that this was one of those times where the critique simply didn't give me anything back. In no way am I saying that the critiquers were bad, simply that the feedback was not very helpful. I personally believe this is because we were all reading a different book, and we were not given a chance to explain our books to others. It is a little difficult to understand the symbolism behind an artifact if you have no idea about the context behind that artifact.

The literature letters forced us to reflect on our book's characters, conflicts and theme by posing a series of questions that we would have to answer in a letter form directed to our readers. The questions helped make these letters meaningful and honest because they included a good combination of questions that asked for personal opinions, as well as questions whose answers had to be supported by the text. The literature letters were my personal favorite assignments from the Book Club Project (besides actually reading the book), and I feel that this project is one that should be kept in its entirety with minimal changes for future classes.

The document above shows my third and final artifact, the Illustrated Plot Poem. I am so proud of this artifact because all four of us, as a group, actually contributed to its creation and design, because of the thought and meaning we put into the lines and (especially) the frame, and because of the circumstances my group was going through when we completed this assignment. If you look closely, you will notice that there is an image in each corner of the paper. The image in the top left corner is the British flag, but it is slightly faded to show how weak the "protection" Great Britain could supply to Little Bee. In the top right corner, there is a pink notepad and pen, and these are there to represent Sarah, who started her own feminine magazine. The notepad is closed to show that all people really know is on the outside, and no one really knows what is on the inside. The image in the bottom left corner is of a woman holding the Nigerian flag, but if you look closely, she looks very sad, and her hair and eyebrows look like dripping oil. We chose this image to represent, not Little Bee, but all the woman like her who never got her story told. In the bottom left corner, there is a picture of Batman's logo, but again if you look closely, you will notice that there is a silhouette looming over the bat, and that represents the shadow Andrew left in Charlie's life. Finally, there are bees flying between the images, and this is to represent how Little Bee brought all of these things together.

The document above shows my third and final Literature Letter, which revolved around the theme we identified for our story. I am extremely proud of this literature letter because of the metaphors that I believe I successfully used while writing this, the amount of insight I used when writing this letter, and the true, genuine excitement I felt when writing this final literature letter.

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